bug#41764: `make authenticate` fails to find the keyring branch

[Miguel Ángel Arruga Vivas]

Hi,

Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:
> Hi,
>
> Leo Famulari <leo@famulari.name> skribis:
>
>> I just tried pushing for the first time since installing the new
>> pre-push hook that runs `make authenticate`.
>>
>> This failed with the following error:
>>
>> Git error: cannot locate remote-tracking branch 'keyring'
>>
>> However, `git branch --all` includes "remotes/origin/keyring".
>>
>> After I did `git checkout origin/keyring`, it worked.
>
> Right, since commit 512b9e2da26968ebafdd47f701edd8fc3936d3e8, you have
> to have a local ‘keyring’ branch.

I've hit this too...

>> Let's update the manual section Commit Access with the recommended way
>> to make this branch accessible to `make authenticate`. Maybe it should
>> even do it automatically?
>
> I don’t think it can do it automatically because it cannot guess what
> the remote is called (Tobias reported an issue earlier because
> “origin/keyring” was hard-coded and Tobias didn’t have an “origin”
> remote.)

I'd say this isn't really a solution: hard-coding the origin is bad but
not the branch name?  Someone who wants to have a local branch called
keyring for whatever reason will have the exact same problem.

From my POV, "origin/keyring" should be the *default*, as only people
modifying its contents should have a local branch pointing to it, but
the moment you name it hard- instead of normal-code you can clearly say
there's a configuration need. :-)

The attached patch exposes a variable for make called GUIX_GIT_KEYRING
to provide the keyring reference to guix git authenticate, including an
example in the manual, as everything else is already there.  WDYT?

Happy hacking!
Miguel

0001-build-Add-GUIX_GIT_KEYRING-variable-for-make-authent.patch
Description: 0001-build-Add-GUIX_GIT_KEYRING-variable-for-make-authent.patch

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